United Kingdom
British number plates are among the most standardised anywhere — black characters on a white front plate and a yellow rear plate, set in a mandated typeface under BS AU 145e. That regularity helps, but real car parks still produce misreads: private registrations in dateless and prefix formats, motorcycle plates, trade plates, dirt, glare and acute camera angles.
Our API reads current-format registrations — two letters, a two-digit age identifier, three letters — as well as the prefix, suffix and dateless series still on the road. It derives the regional identifier from the memory tag of a current-format plate, and returns an honest confidence score with every read: 97%+ accuracy at under 200ms, from any camera you already own.
Live demo
Upload a vehicle photo and watch the API return the plate text, confidence score and vehicle details in real time. Your first 150 calls each month are free — no credit card required.
Upload image
Try it with UK plates
Drag and drop a vehicle photo here, or browse files
JPEG, PNG, or WebP — max 10MB, min 640×480
API response
// Upload an image to see the live response.
Coverage
Since 2001 the current format has encoded a local memory tag and an age identifier — AB12 CDE — but millions of vehicles still carry prefix (A123 BCD), suffix (ABC 123D) and dateless registrations, many of them cherished transfers that follow no date logic at all.
The models read all of these as printed, on standard and motorcycle-sized plates, without assuming a fixed mask — so a dateless private plate is never “corrected” into a modern format. Ambiguous reads come back flagged with a low confidence score rather than silently guessed.
01
AB12 CDE — memory tag, age identifier and three random letters.
02
A123 BCD registrations still in daily circulation.
03
ABC 123D series, common on cherished transfers.
04
Short, high-value private registrations with no age identifier.
05
Private plates across all formats, read exactly as printed.
06
Two-row rear plates with condensed spacing.
07
Red-on-white trade plates used by dealers and the motor trade.
API response
Responses include the registration exactly as printed, a regional identifier derived from the current-format memory tag, and optional vehicle details extracted from the same photo.
POST /v1/detect
{
"success": true,
"data": {
"plates": [
{
"text": "LD63 WXY",
"confidence": 0.98,
"country": "GB",
"region": "London",
"bounding_box": {
"x": 428, "y": 396,
"width": 172, "height": 58
}
}
],
"car": {
"brand": "BMW",
"model": "3 Series",
"body_type": "sedan",
"color": {
"name": "black",
"hex": "#101010"
}
}
},
"processing_time_ms": 148
}Use cases
From single-site car parks to national parking management companies — self-serve API access with pay-as-you-go pricing.
Barrier-free entry and exit, pay-by-plate validation and overstay detection for public and private car parks.
Evidence-grade reads — photo, timestamp and confidence — for parking management companies enforcing on private land.
Resident and visitor access control for gated developments and managed estates.
Flag known drive-off plates the moment a vehicle arrives at the pump.
Automate check-in and check-out at depots, rental returns and workshop gates.
Get an API key, send a photo, and receive the registration, region and confidence back in under 200ms — 150 free calls every month.
Also available
No per-country contracts or add-ons — the same endpoint reads plates from every supported market.
Every plate read can include brand, model, body type and color of the vehicle from the same image — explore the Car Recognition API